2008 - GOALS: go to Central America for the summer without getting fired from any of my jobs, do another photo exhibition and some performances of music/poetry, and enjoy my life! wish me luck...

Sunday, December 04, 2005

The Crazy Season Has Begun

Well, well, well, I guess it's finally time to get involved in the blog underworld. I've been trying fruitlessly to keep my webpage updated but for some reason it felt like too much of a pain in the ass and I was only cutting and pasting to get new colors for the pages and I think this will be easier to use. We'll see...

So, the situation: I moved to Southwest Germany in the Black Forest nearly 3 years ago to follow the winds of love, or rather a German girl named Assiyeah that I met on the Greek Island of Rhodos in April 2002. I went back to California afterwards, worked my ass off in a microbrewery in Orange County, sold my car and in January 2003 headed off to Old Europe.

I wanted to be an English teacher, not from any burning desire to make the world a better place but compared to my other two choices (army man or computer guru) to getting a residence permit, English teaching took the cake easily. After determining this, I realized that Germany is a certificate-heavy country and so I went off to Brno, Czech Republic for a month to earn a certificate how to teach English. Did it help? Yes but it was also stupid at the same time. However, when I came back in March 2003, I had work with 6 weeks and now, 2.5 years, I guess you could say I'm succeeding. I have 7 different employers, including the university in the town I live in. I haven't saved any money since living here but have experienced so much and been exposed to so many cultures and languages that money could never provide me.

2006 is going to begin in a month and I'm thinking that this is going to be a breakthrough year for me, if nothing else for the productivity I plan to produce productively and for some travel adventures that get closer and closer everyday. Plans for 2006 include:

Writing my first play, entitled "Looking for Horst", about some German students interviewing people for a room they have to rent

Writing a travelogue about my 2-week experience in Norway in May earlier this year as I was carting around 120 copies of a 50-page book in Norwegian I had written trying to sell or trade them in order to make my trip as close to free as possible.

Compiling a book called "A Humorous Guide to Leaving the Country", taking journal entries for the past 3.5 years and showing people how I was able to move to a country that doesn't speak English as a first language and succeed on a level that people who I respect would find respectable.

Have my second photo exhibition, this one called "American Summer" and based on my 6 week trip to the States this summer, encompassing photos from LA, SF, DC, Philly, NYC and Boston.

Spend the summer (7 weeks) in South America with Assiyeah, taking in Buenos Aires up to Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and hopefully Macchu Picchu.

So, you take all that mixed in with working 30-35 teaching hours/week and other trips to Paris, London, Berlin, Romania planned for the first half of 2006, it's going to be busy, hence the need for productive productivity.

The crazy season has begun. It's in between New Year's and Xmas, but for some reason I don't feel it here in Germany. The shops are closed on Sunday, the Germans are not great consumers and in a way that's what makes it crazy to me. I'm used to going to the mall and shoving through throngs of people buying stuff other people don't want. I'm not saying one is better than the other but still, different.

All right, this is just the first post but I have a feeling that this will be easier to update than the webpage. I'll let ya'll know when I get something worth noting on it!